THE NATURAL WAY OF LIVING

They didn't have natural childbirth back when my children were born, or maybe they had it, but it wasn't very popular.

What one did, with childbirth imminent, was rush to a hospital at the last possible moment and emerge groggily three to five days later with the child in hand and intermediate details fuzzy.

Artificial childbirth, we called it.

Since then, of course, natural everything has become very popular, and results are mixed.

In some instances, the choice between natural and artificial depends upon one's age, with the artificial lighting provided by flourescent lightbulbs as the perfect example.

This kind of lighting is fine for displaying children to best advantage, even though children never spend a dime, much less $32.50 an ounce, on imported moisturizers distilled in an exclusive Swiss clinic from the essence of unborn goats or whatever.

After a certain age, however, one is best served by natural lighting, such as the wattage of a single candle, preferably a small one, since imported moisturizers don't really do that much good, do they?

With natural coloring, it's just the opposite. Children's hair grows right out of their heads in absolutely perfect shades, but adults require judicious application of a little something artificial, and why children are given both skin and hair they couldn't possibly appreciate is beyond me.

Natural flavors -- such as chocolate and Swiss cheese -- are preferable to the artificial and, fortunately, artificial flavors are easy to avoid because they tend to be artificially colored, too, as in popsicles, Twinkie- type cupcakes, hot dogs, Cheez Whiz, Tang and so on, none of which bear contemplating, far less eating.

Natural bristles provide a less clear-cut case. Cosmetic brushes that have natural bristles (whatever they are), cost a lot more than brushes with artificial bristles (whatever they are), but do your eyebrows care? Probably not. So here it appears that one could go either way.

But then we come to natural resources and find that economics cannot be the ruling factor. Natural resources, such as diamonds, tend to run to serious money, whereas artificial resources, such as sequins, are incredibly cheap, but the inability to afford the former is no excuse whatsoever to assault public sensibilities with the latter.

Which brings us to natural tendencies, and again, one finds that these are fine for children, who may exhibit them by grabbing a stuffed bunny without regard to who had it first or by spewing food from their mouths after it has been chewed for a few minutes and found to be yukky.

Unfortunately, some adults also exhibit natural tendencies, such as exaggeration of the esteem in which they are held by their peers or by turning left unexpectedly from the far right lane, and it is these people who give the entire concept a bad name.

As a rule of thumb, natural tendencies are acceptable when displayed by children but are invariably unappealing when exhibited by adults.

Now you take your natural environment. While desirable in the abstract and very fetching on a postcard, the natural environment actually amounts to a lot of underbrush, dampness, uneven terrain, heat, cold, insects, wild animals and thorny vegetation. It is, at the same time, seriously lacking in even such simple amenities as hot water, corkscrews, chamber orchestras, washing machines, book stores, veal Oscar and really attractive shoes.

So there we have an example in which the natural is nice if you're just visiting but the artificial wins if you're actually going to live there.